


Touchy-Feely

by neo7v



Series: Soulmark Chronicles [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Diners, Fluffy Ending, Haphephobia, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Touch Aversion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-17 05:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13069995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neo7v/pseuds/neo7v
Summary: Hanamaki was screwed. Extremely. How was someone who fainted at even the slightest touch from someone else going to find their soulmate?At the first touch of hands, a tattoo is made between soulmates as an everlasting bond. This touch could be a handshake, a high five, or even a mere brush across the back of each other’s hands. As soon as their hands touch, they are bound for life. However, whether that bond is platonic or not is up to the soulmates and not the mark itself.Or so Hanamaki had heard. But how was he to find his own soulmate with his condition? And who was to love someone as wrong as him? Certainly not a soulmate. Perhaps he'd die without ever finding his other half, soulmateless and alone.





	Touchy-Feely

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I also have an ongoing fic that I'm wanting to finish before Christmas, but I got distracted during finals today and this came out instead. I've been wanting to start a soulmate au collection, so I hope you enjoy this and if you have any ideas for future fics, I'd love to hear them!
> 
> Without further ado, Enjoy the one-shot!

Hanamaki was screwed. Extremely. How was someone who fainted at even the slightest touch from someone else going to find their soulmate?

At the first touch of hands, a tattoo is made between soulmates as an everlasting bond. This touch could be a handshake, a high five, or even a mere brush across the back of each other’s hands. As soon as their hands touch, they are bound for life. Whether that bond is platonic or not though is up to the soulmates.

Or so Hanamaki had heard. But how was he to find his own soulmate with his condition? And who was to love someone as wrong as him? Certainly not a soulmate. Perhaps he'd die without ever finding his other half, soulmateless and alone.

“Good afternoon, Makki,” his best friend Oikawa called out from where he was sitting at their dining table doing homework, his trademark smirk resting comfortably on his face. His hand was reached out as if to pat the pink haired man, but he paused just in time to see him flinch. “Right, right. No touching. Sorry about that,” Oikawa apologized. “I keep forgetting.”

“At least you remember most of the time,” Makki muttered, face pinched up in anger towards their other roommate. “You think Hinata would remember, but it seems all his intelligence was tossed down the drain in favor of making him faster.” Oikawa chuckled.

“Well, you aren’t wrong,” the other man said, looking down at his watch and blanching. “Ah, I’m going to be late for work! And so are you, man.” Makki checked his watch too.

“Ah crap, you’re right. Guess I’ll see you later, Trashykawa.” Makki snickered.

“Whatever Pinky Pie wannabe,” Oikawa snarked back, his voice filled with sarcasm. The two men bursted into laughter as they sprinted out the door and down the stairs of their apartment complex, parting to go opposite ways when they reached the lobby.

On top of how Hanamaki hated touching people, he also worked in one of the worst industries to be in. The food industry. The pay was horrible at best, the tips lousy, and the customers lousier. All together, Makki felt down in his heart that this wasn’t going to be a normal day at work. Someone would try to shake his hand or a kid would run him over, something that seemed to happen on a daily basis and caused the man to throw up afterwards each time.

He probably would have been fired by now for his behavior or left to find a better job if he didn’t know the owner of the diner, Hitoka Yachi. She was a sweet, petite woman with bobbed blonde hair and the shyest smile Makki had ever seen someone wear.

They’d met the afternoon that Yachi had first opened the diner, Makki stumbling in after brushing against someone in the street and promptly throwing up on the floor in front of her. She’d cooed in sympathy and immediately taken him under her wing; metaphorically of course as she’d realized in an instant what the problem was. Hanamaki had worked there ever since, bustling tables and trying his hardest not to throw up, but always failing that task at least once a shift.

A wet rag in his hand, Makki wiped absentmindedly at the tables as customers chatted excitedly to each other around him, the sound dulled against his own thoughts. The slide of the fabric against the plastic tables sounded soothing, a lull in the otherwise storm around him.  
***  
What would it be like to touch someone and not even have the urge to flinch? To be able to pat someone on the back and not want to immediately cleanse that hand afterward. To be able to give his teammates a high five in volleyball and not throw up afterwards out of disgust? It must be nice. To feel normal and not at all whatever Hanamaki was.

“Uh, sir?” A hand tapped his shoulder and Makki immediately felt nauseated. Vision slightly blurry and hands trembling, he turned around and tried to smile at whoever it was, but it only came out as a grimace.

“Can I help you?” he gritted out through the urge to flee. A boy that looked near Makki’s age with bluish-green eyes stared back at him, his messy curls of black hair and matching thick eyebrows creating an aura of stillness in the crowded diner.

The boy casted his gaze to the ground, as if unsure how to respond. After a moment more of this he looked up, a resolve of determination shining clearly in his eyes. “I wanted to ask you the same question. You’re looking quite pale. Are you sick or don’t feel well? If so, you should probably tell your boss. I know this will seem kind of stalkerish, but everyday I come in, you have this same sickened look on your face. Like you’re constantly nauseated or something.”

Makki let out a low chuckle, subtly shuffling a step back from the other boy. “I’m fine,” he insisted, attempting to smile again for good measure and succeeding a bit more this time around. “I just have this small thing with touch aversion. It’s not big deal.”

“What?! No big deal? That’s ridiculous!” His blue-green eyes were blown wide in surprise and, this Makki was surprised to see, anger. “I can’t believe your boss makes you work the busiest shift when it probably physically pains you to even brush up against someone.” He stopped for a moment, realization dawning on his face. “Oh gosh, I touched you to get your attention. I’m so sorry! I-I didn’t realize! Ugh, this is why Iwaizumi calls me an emotionless prick. It’s all because of incidents like these…”

Makki instantly felt calmed by the stuttering mess of a boy, his nausea falling away like a second skin. He stopped for a moment, surprised. He’d never truly felt so at ease while by another person, not even Oikawa whom he’d known for years. It felt… nice.

The other boy continued to blabber on, oblivious to the now calmed Makki in front of him as a real smile shifted onto his face. “I’m Takahiro Hanamaki. And… it’s alright, okay? You didn’t mean any harm by it and I already feel better. My skin isn’t as pale anymore, see?”

The other boy paused in his rambling, peering meticulously at Makki and then nodding in agreement. “You do look much better,” he noted. Sticking out his hand, the other boy had a small smirk on his face as he continued, “I’m Issei Matsukawa, but you can call me yours tonight.”

Hanamaki didn’t even hear the pickup line as he stared at the outstretched hand, wondering if he should just take it. Maybe this was the first step to getting over whatever started this touch aversion of his. A small tug in his gut whispered for him to take the man’s hand. Take it and never let go. Should he trust this feeling? One that led him to avoid touching others like it was the plague, but was also telling him that this one was safe? He wanted to change and this had to be the start to that.

With hardened resolve, Hanamaki grabbed Matsukawa’s hand and shook it, squeezing softly to acknowledge the fact that he had taken someone else’s hand and voluntarily at that. Yet, he didn’t feel like throwing up or even flinching for that matter. His hands felt cold and calloused, but also comforting at the same time. It was… nice.

A buzzing sensation suddenly shot between their hands, creating sparks that flew through the air, mesmerizing both of the boys and those in the diner. Colors of black and green and pink clouded the air, blinding the two boys to whatever was going on between their clenched together hands.

Matsukawa gazed up at him with wide eyes, his thick eyebrows almost into his hairline. “What the heck is happening?”

Hanamaki shrugged his shoulders, just as confused, before going back to gazing at their hands intertwined between them. It couldn’t be what he thought it was. No, he wasn’t supposed to have one and certainly not to someone as kind and charming as Matsukawa. He deserved someone better than Hanamaki. Someone he would be able to hold hands with and kiss whenever he felt like it and hold him tightly as he fell asleep. Someone not like Hanamaki.

As the last spark simmered down, Hanamaki stared down at their hands in horror. There, on each of their wrists, was an intricately patterned band of varying color. Hanamaki’s band was black with the tips of the swirled ends tipped in green. Matsukawa’s on the other hand was the same dusty shade of pink as his hair, the ends of the swirls tipped black like the color of his eyes.

“Hanamaki! I-”

Hanamaki fled before Matsukawa could finish his sentence, already knowing what the other boy was going to say. ‘I was hoping it would be someone cooler, but I guess you’ll do.’ Or maybe something like, ‘I don’t think this will work out. Maybe we could be just friends?’

But Makki didn’t want to just be friends with Matsukawa. As soon as he’d laid eyes on his messy black hair and that somewhat cheeky grin he’d given Makki as he’d extended his hand, Hanamaki had fallen. Hard.

“Oh, bother,” he cried out as he ran down an empty alleyway. “Why’d it have to be someone I actually want to touch? He probably thinks I’m weird for not being able to touch others. And of course I’m fine touching him. Why didn’t I recognize him as being my soulmate the moment I’d felt that calming aura settle over me? Now he’s stuck with a loser like me the rest of his life and there’s no way to reverse this abomination.”

Makki stared morosely at the black and green soulmark, huffing in annoyance as he plopped onto a bench outside an empty shop. “He’ll never accept a soulmate like me. No one in their right mind would.”

“Guess I’m not in my right mind then. Isn’t that a little cruel to say about your soulmate?” Makki looked up with a gasp to find Matsukawa sitting beside him on the bench, a soft smile on his face as he stared lovingly down at Hanamaki’s face.

“You weren’t supposed to follow me,” Hanamaki huffed.

The smile slipped easily off the other boy’s face. “And why not?” He held up his soulmarked hand. “We’re soulmates afterall. You can’t get rid of me that easily. I don’t know why you would want to either.”

The pink haired boy sighed. “It’s that reason right there.”

“What reason?”

“The reason that we’re soulmates that you shouldn’t have followed me,” Hanamaki yelled back, tears of frustration prickling the backs of his eyes. “You shouldn’t be tethered to some weirdo like me who can’t even walk the streets without having to throw up. I’d just get in your way.”

As silence filled the air, Hanamaki finally looked up from where he’d been staring at his lap only to find Matsukawa gazing into the setting sky. Finally, the other boy spoke up. “Do you believe in fate?”

What a strange question to ask. “I guess,” he answered warily.

“I’ve always believed in fate and wishes, ever since I was young. The wishes from birthday candles and dandelions and shooting stars were all the same to me. I wish for a soulmate. It didn’t matter who they were and what they looked like. I just wanted someone there. Someone I know wouldn’t abandon me no matter what happened and someone I wouldn’t even dream of abandoning because they would finally be something in my life I couldn’t lose. Bound for life in love. It was a nice thought and one that kept me going through childhood.” Matsukawa let out a soft sigh. “I guess this isn’t quite the situation I was expecting. I assumed my soulmate would just automatically love me and never want to leave, but that’s not how it works, huh?”

“That’s not it at all,” Hanamaki whispered back. “I don’t want you to regret being soulmates with someone like me.”

Matsukawa finally turned his gaze towards Matsukawa, a fierce glint in his eyes. “I’m fine with you the way you are, okay? We don’t have to rush anything. As long as…” He hiccuped, eyes shining slightly with unshed tears of frustration. “As long as you’re by my side, I’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine. Okay?”

Acceptance. It was something he’d never expected out of his soulmate, but was glad nonetheless. Oh, to have someone who’d never leave him. It was a dream come true in only his wildest fairy tales.

“Okay,” he whispered back as he stood up.

Matsukawa stood up too, holding his hand out to Hanamaki. “Together?”

Hanamaki smiled and took his hand, their bands gleaming in the setting sun as they walked off to a new beginning. “Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you don't follow my works and are looking for a fanfic with 40,000+ words to read, I have Camp Oblivious which should be finished in the next week! It's a camp au based in America with a prank war and a blackmarket in the mess hall. The link is below if you're interested!
> 
> [ **Camp Oblivious** ](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11095491)


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